Baby dies after being put on contaminated drip at NHS hospital

A baby has died and 14 more are sick after being put on a contaminated drip in intensive care units at six different hospitals.

The newborns, most of them premature, were being fed intravenously as they were unable to feed on their own.

However, they all contracted septicaemia after being infected with the bacillus cereus bacterium.

The baby who died was being treated at London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital.

The surviving infants were said to be responding to antibiotic treatment.

Health officials said because septicaemia developed quickly they were not expecting any more cases.

The cases have been ‘strongly linked’ to 162 units of liquid feed sent to 20 hospitals. They expired on Monday so should not have been used since.

Three cases were reported at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals, four at Chelsea and Westminster, three at Brighton and Sussex, two at Addenbrooke’s Cambridge, two at Luton and Dunstable and one at the Whittington Hospital in London.

Manufacturer, ITH Pharma, which said it was ‘very saddened’ to learn of the baby’s death, told health officials it identified ‘an incident that might have caused the contamination’. It added: ‘We are doing everything we can to help them establish the facts.’

Meanwhile, ten members of staff at Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales, were suspended yesterday after the death of an 88-year-old patient from an ‘unexplained and serious injury’.